"Eden" is no paradise.

Ron Howard's tale about a group of European settlers who attempt to carve out their own slice of heaven on an uninhabited piece of land in the Galápagos Islands rests unsteadily between drama and camp, as the director and cast never seem to be on the same page about what movie they're making.

Sex, murder, intrigue, desire, Nietzsche, feral hogs and a naked Jude Law, it's all here. But "Eden's" pulse never rises, even as it becomes a "Lord of the Flies" riff in the clothes — or lack thereof — of a historical epic.

Jude Law plays Dr. Friedrich Ritter, who flees Germany and comes to the island of Floreana with his wife, Dora Strauch Ritter (Vanessa Kirby), to start fresh and build their own utopia. It's the early 1930s, society is collapsing, and Friedrich yearns for a fresh start. He's going off the grid, in today's terms, and his quest is a reminder that no matter the time or political circumstances of the world, the need to Get Away From it All has always been a desire.

Things aren't going that well from the jump. Friedrich is composing his manifesto, but his writings — mercilessly banged out on his typewriter — are a bunch of garbled musings on pain, a philosophy he's cobbling together as he goes along. Things get worse when a pair of his followers, Heinz (Daniel Brühl) and Margret Wittmer (Sydney Sweeney), show up with their son, Harry (Jonathan Tittel), and decide to help themselves to part of the island.

Friedrich toys with them, setting them up for failure by having them set up camp against a couple of uninhabitable caves; he figures they'll be gone by springtime. But much to his chagrin, they thrive, setting up a fresh water reservoir and building themselves a home.

Trouble doubles down with the arrival of Baroness Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrhorn (Ana de Armas), a big-talking fabulist who arrives on the island like a Real Housewife of Floreana, with dreams of building a luxury hotel on the island. She arrives with two boy toys in tow — Felix Kammerer and Toby Wallace play her lovers/servants — and their sordid drama is a further disruption to the Ritters, the Wittmers and the supposed tranquility they're all seeking.

This is pulpy stuff, and it's heightened in the script by screenwriter Noah Pink ("Tetris"), which has the Ritters fighting and fornicating in the same breath, and the Baroness and her male companions treating the Wittmer's water supply like their own personal hot tub. But the movie seems unsure what to make of its characters, and forgets to give the audience a rooting interest in any of them. (The Wittmers are the most grounded but the most dull of the island's inhabitants, which makes them boring as surrogates.)

Law and Kirby are deliciously vicious snakes, with Law's character wearing what looks like modified bottle caps for teeth. (His character has plucked out all of his teeth to avoid dental illness, which is one way to do it.) They're embroiled in a cutting thriller. De Armas is supremely over the top, which would be fun if anyone met her at her level, but as it stands she's on her own island of camp. Sweeney and Brühl, meanwhile, are locked into a domestic drama. Rarely do these separate styles mesh.

There's no shortage of human drama on this island, but "Eden" plays like several separate versions of the story washed ashore in the same tide. It's a study in humanity with nothing fresh to say and no fresh way of saying it.

———

'EDEN'

Grade: C

MPA rating: R (for some strong violence, sexual content, graphic nudity and language)

Running time: 2:09

How to watch: In theaters Aug. 22

———

©2025 The Detroit News. Visit detroitnews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.